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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8265825" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I mean, as a purely amateur cook who gets compliments on his cooking, I dunno if I agree with this. Learning how to layer flavors, for example, or working with mother sauces, is stuff that generalizes. Guidelines for how long to cook meat (and in what ways) based on the animal it came from, the part of its body it came from, and how it's been cut are pretty important to listen to--as I learned when I tried to cut a roast into thin strips for stir fry. (It did not go well--lesson learned, roasts really are for roasting!)Acids help deglaze pans and cut through heavy flavors, but they don't tend to survive as flavor under hot temperatures. Fat adds mouthfeel and flavor, but you don't want your sauces to break. Most herbs (fresh or dry) should be added relatively late, but some (like thyme, as I recently learned) do best when thrown in early.Well, the reason I gave that was just to show (a) "this is a behavior that's not generally wise" and (b) "some DMs can pull it off." Sort of like how you shouldn't generally begin a sentence with a conjunction, but sometimes it is the best thing to do. Or how, in English, if you want people to understand you, you should put the subject of a sentence before its verb--but it is quite common in Shakespearean(-inspired)/Early Modern English poetry to put the verb last (e.g. "and though my sobs the heavens shook" or Anne Bradstreet's "<a href="https://memoirandremains.com/2014/03/12/anne-bradstreet-i-blessed-his-name-that-gave-and-took/" target="_blank">In silent night when rest I took</a>"). That is, I'm saying some things can be generally understood to be inadvisable for good, generically-valid reasons, yet still okay to "break" under some circumstances.But if refinement is what you want...If it is truly a game (that is, neither a puzzle nor illusionism), the players must be able to make informed decisions, and to learn from and adapt to the consequences of their actions. The former requires that information is "real" in some sense: game stats do not change unless the situation changes in a way they could discover, even if they (by coincidence, research failure, bad luck, whatever) fail to actually do so. The latter, that their choices are the real and direct cause of the consequences, not filtered through concealed DM fiat--that is, if DM fiat applies, they are made aware of it and can at least try to plan accordingly in the future.The former means "fudging" in the sense of shifting the world around on a DM feeling is not kosher--hence, intentionally throwing a totally-unplanned, never-justified green dragon at the party just to cause a TPK and for no other reason isn't okay. But if you develop the green dragon in advance, that is, if you do the DM work of establishing that connection even if the players fail to notice it, you've done your due diligence. The latter means "fudging" in the sense of tweaking the numbers of a creature as it stands before the players, in a similarly unplanned and never-justified way, is not okay. But if you provide a justification in the doing--and, importantly, enable and encourage the players to learn what happened and what they might do about it in the future--then you're in the clear.Fundamentally, this aspect of the art of DMing is all about enabling the players to...well, play. Play permits skill (even if some of that skill includes "knowing how much risk is acceptable"); skill can only be gained if information is valid and can be reflected upon; information can only be valid and reflected upon if it actually arises from things the players could be aware of, whether or not they actually become aware of it. There are other aspects, which should not at all be treated as lesser or inferior--supporting the kind of aesthetic/narrative experience the players want, for example, which may be very old-school "zero-to-hero" (or, quite often, "zero-to-dead until you get a zero-to-hero") or a newer-school "exciting action-adventure hero" or whatever else.</blockquote>

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